Notes

Ode: An ode does not have a set form; rather it is defined by its content, which is usually uplifting or lofty. Odes often employ apostrophe, a figure of speech in which the speaker directly addresses a person or object that is not present or is imaginary. An example is Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind.”
•Elegy: An elegy is sorrowful or melancholy. An elegy is often written to lament someone’s death. Similar to odes, elegies have no set form. Traditionally, elegies portray three phases of loss: the poet first laments the loss of the person, then praises the person, and then finds consolation. An example is Gerard Manley Hopkins’s “Felix Randal.”
•Sonnet: The word sonnet, from the Italian word sonnetto, means “a little song or sound.” A sonnet is a fourteen-line poem often written in iambic pentameter (ten syllables in each line). Shakespearean sonnets, also called English sonnets, have three quatrains followed by a couplet.